Startup Toolkit – How to Make a Hit on the Internet

 

First impressions are critical for entrepreneurs. People will buy depending on what they feel about you emotionally. Just like your bricks and mortar location, your Internet presence will be strong if you always remember why people will buy from you.

It’s important to tap into the psyche of your prospective customers – there are five value perceptions that motivate customers to buy.

That’s right, customers aren’t even aware of it, but they make a buying decision based on five psychological reasons about value: What they think about your spokespeople, image of your company, product or service utility, convenience, and price.

Yes, there are a lot of people who will only buy at the cheapest price, but ignore them. (For more on this topic, see this column.)  

Now that you’ve laid a foundation for sales to make a hit on the Internet, here’s the remainder of your startup toolkit:

Create a credible name. Thanks to the recession, businesspeople and consumers have changed their outlook. The dot-com era of quirky names will not work as well these days. Also, your name has to be relevant and easy-to-remember. That goes for your branding slogan or tagline, and your logo. Product or service utility is important in a slogan and logo – answer the question that all visitors subconsciously ask, “What’s in it for me?”

If you really want to look professional, create a flavicon from your logo, which is also known as a Web site icon.

Establish a strong reputation. Demonstrate your expertise as an authoritative resource. Become known as a leader in your industry. Make informed statements in newspaper articles and other online forums.

Professional image. Your site needs to be low-key, but assertive in telling your story. Include a page that explains what you’re all about. That’s different from being too sales-oriented or ostentatious. Demonstrate you expect to earn your visitors’ business. Make certain your site’s layout capitalizes on the natural movement of the eye, which is to upper left, over to the right and then down the side. So a strong element needs to be on the left, too, such as a great graphic of video.

Professionalism also means an informative blog, which will help guarantee that you will have a higher search-engine placement. Encourage interaction. If you maintain a separate blog, make sure it’s synchronized with your Web site.

Showcase your team. Customers want to feel comfortable dealing with you and your staff. Buyers are impressed if you show pride in your workers. Show their images and bios on your site to point out their expertise.

Get media coverage and showcase it. It’s true more and more people are relying on social media promotions. But publicity in a credible news medium – newspaper, TV or radio – will generate the most respect. Flaunt it.

Testimonials. Become adept at generating testimonials, go for it.

Videos. Relevant videos now play a key role. Suggested topics include your philosophy of doing business or demonstrating the benefits of a key product or service.

Social Media. Your social media – Facebook, Twitter or even LinkedIn – should be coordinated with your site. Again, encourage inter-activity. There are two reasons to insert sharing buttons (i.e. the “add this” tool bar – www.addthis.com). It will enable visitors to share your Web site link with others, and you will be able to share your pages, too.

Proofread all copy. Obviously, errors do not promote professionalism. That means  you need to budget time to double-check all spelling and links to pages.

Fresh looks. Update your content as often as possible. Search engines and visitors will take note. But take care not to extremely change your look so you can continue to capitalize on your previous marketing initiatives.

Optimize. Be sure to use search-engine optimization techniques and coordinate your site with your social media.

Contact. Make it easy, very easy for visitors to get contact information – your location, telephone number and e-mail. But include your information in graphics so unwanted bots and spammers can’t pick up the information simply by crawling your site. You’ll avoid countless unwanted e-mail spam, phishers, and telephone calls.

Prevent online threats. Remember British Petroleum’s online nightmare – the fake BP Twitter account? It generates 10 times the number of visitors than BP’s Twitter account. Be sure to take five precautions against threats from Facebook and Twitter.

From the Coach’s Corner, here’s more on online marketing:

5 Strategies to Sell More from Your Web Site

In SEO, Your Site’s Download Speed Matters to Google